In the process of setting up a 50 gallon salt tank to rehome my 29 gallon's critters and am thinking of sump design.
I recently was reading that many of you have forgone the use of filter socks for various reasons.
My question is do protein skimmers do a decent enough of a job at removing particulates from the water that a simple coarse sponge pre-filter would suffice and the small particulates that pass through would get picked up by the skimmer foam?

I am kinda on the fence as to whether or not to incorporate filter socks in the sump design or not.

So those of you who stopped using them, was there any discernible difference in suspended particulates in the water or did the skimmer foam get "thicker" or noticeably pick up more visible stuff?

I like filter socks personally, and most people still use them as far as I know.

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thanks for the reply.

I assume they need cleaned daily.
But how well does a skimmer work at removing small particulate matter.
I imagine that if light enough to be carried by the bubbles, any particles would end up in the skimmate, correct?

It really depends on how much you feed as to how often they need to be changed IMO, I feed lightly 3x a week and would change my socks out weekly but tree wasn't a whole lot for them to catch.

Now I could be wrong on this but I've always been under the impression that skimmers only remove organics once they've dissolved and are apart of the water column. So anything that's big enough robe caught by the sock is probably to big to be pulled out by the skimmer. IMHO if your designing the sump yourself, set it up to accommodate both